A variety of conventional on-board vehicle parking spot detection systems are known to those of ordinary skill in the art. Most of these parking spot detection systems utilize one or more proximity sensors, e.g. ultra-sonic sensors or the like, mounted on a vehicle to detect an empty parking spot between two occupied parking spots. Such detection is limited by the close range of operation of such sensors, typically on the order of a few meters. Further, such detection requires the presence of structures or obstacles, e.g. other vehicles, on either side of an empty parking spot to be detected. If an empty parking “slot” is not created by physical references, then detection fails. This limits the usefulness of these proximity sensor-based parking spot detection systems, even when coupled with various relatively slow, sub-optimal, and potentially unsafe planning-based automatic parking systems that provide maps of potential and/or available parking spots through the cloud or other vehicle-to-vehicle communication means. This limits the usefulness of the proximity sensor-based parking spot detection systems in DA and AD systems.
Parking spot detection systems that utilize BEV camera images generate the BEV from multiple, e.g. four, fisheye camera images that are warped to be parallel to the ground and stitched together to create a view of a vehicle from above, including the nearby surroundings. Lines and obstacles related to parking spots can then be segmented from these BEV camera images. Again, however, such detection is limited in terms of range, typically to a few meters, and the BEV camera images tend to be undesirably distorted. This limits the usefulness of these BEV camera image-based parking spot detection systems in DA and AD systems.
Thus, what is still needed in the art is a parking spot detection system that utilizes a standard front (or side or rear) camera or sensor image, such that parking spot detection and identification is enhanced and may be carried out at a distance, whether the parking spot is empty, full, surrounded by full parking spots, surrounded by empty parking spots, etc. Such a parking spot detection system is provided by the present invention.